


ephemeral

by JRC



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Modern AU, Named Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Nonbinary Character, Nonbinary Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:21:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27298564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JRC/pseuds/JRC
Summary: "It made you feel something. Now… let it go. Beauty is ephemeral,” they say, pausing at the foot of their artwork, and casting an affectionate look down at it, before turning their gaze to the dismayed people around the chalk. “You have your pictures, but more importantly, you have the feelings this piece gave you. Time may dull them, but nothing can take your feelings from you.”
Relationships: Solus zos Galvus | Emet-Selch/Warrior of Light
Comments: 5
Kudos: 14





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> g-rating! from me! I know, shocking. I'm shocked too. But, if this continues, I definitely don't intend to keep it that rating. Incredibly self-indulgent, has a vague outline of plot but no schedule (and I have no impulse control) so we'll see if this gets anywhere.

Hades closes his eyes as he steps out of the building, lifting an arm to block his face from the flash of dozens of cameras as the paparazzi all clamor to capture a suitably interesting shot of him for the morning’s gossip rags. He will give them nothing, precisely what they deserve. Like carrion, all of them. Flying back to their nests with frozen images of tortured souls, harried at every turn by razor-sharp beaks and claws, always on the hunt for the next kill. 

It’s dreary outside. Like it might rain. He opens a simple black umbrella into the crowd of photographers, knocking against the closest of them, before lifting it over his head, and slouching beneath it, through the throng, and towards his waiting car. He’s only somewhat put-out that he hasn’t managed to knock the cameras from any of their hands with his antics by the time he reaches his car door.

Vain, Lahabrea would call him. Over-dramatic, Elidibus would say. Hades couldn’t care less. Where are either of them? Skulking? Plotting? He will do as he pleases. Besides, he can afford to be vain. To be over-dramatic. Hades can afford anything in the world. That’s what it means, to be one of the world’s foremost painters.

Hades folds the umbrella only after he has slid into the upholstered leather seat of his private car, pulling it neatly into the cabin beside him before quickly shutting the door. He completely ignores the din outside the car as the paparazzi reluctantly lower their cameras, their invasive flashes dying down to nothing. He turns his gaze to the mirror attached to the back of the driver’s seat, and reaches up to tug his lace-front wig up and off. This releases his long white hair, which Hades carefully unwinds from its delicate hair net before reaching up to muss it into a more natural look with one gloved hand.

The gloves come off next, pristine white things that are a devil to keep so clean when he is in the studio, tossed carelessly onto the seat beside him, before he moves to shrug out of his extravagant coat. It’s a ridiculous confection; black with layer upon layer of ruffles, gold filigree, and a fur collar, of all things. He balls the coat up and shoves it off the seat, staring dispassionately down at the bundle of fabric on the car's floor as he reaches up to undo the fastenings of his blouse. It too ends up in a heap on the floor, along with his fancy shoes and perfectly-pressed pants. Let them be someone else's problem, he thinks, as he reaches into the compartment between the driver's and passenger's seats, and withdraws a canvas bag full of street clothes.

The world knows him as Emet-Selch. What the world does not know is that he was Hades before he was Emet-Selch. That he is still Hades, now. That he has always been Hades. That he will always be Hades.

Hades tugs on a well-worn old tie-dyed T-shirt, shrugs into an overlarge hoodie with holes in the pockets, slips on a pair of jeans with more hole than pant leg, and finally slides his feet into a pair of loafers that look like they've been to war and back. Thus attired, he knocks on the screen that divides his private compartment in the back of the car from where his driver sits. 

“Stop here, please,” Hades requests, reaching into the pocket of his sweatshirt for a pair of thick-rimmed glasses with ineffectual lenses, slipping them on before he nods to the driver, and slides out of the car, gently closing the door behind him. He taps the roof of the car and his driver starts off, familiar with the routine that the eccentric artist has established. Two hours, and they will meet back in the same location. The driver may do as he pleases in the meantime.

* * *

Hades walks without direction, only a vague sense of where he must return to after two hours have passed - he has one hour and sixteen minutes left, approximately. This part of the city looks like somewhere the famed artist Emet-Selch would never be caught dead; it’s perfect. He allows himself a moment to survey the blocks around him when he stops at a corner of the sidewalk caked in varying stages of fossilizing chewing gum, golden eyes sweeping out over the surrounding blocks.

The street appears to neaten up as it heads north, and Hades turns his attention elsewhere, because  _ neat _ is the exact opposite of what he is looking for. The east appears to shift to a more cultural area, Doman or Yanxian, with bustling storefronts, vendors hawking wares in no less than three different languages, and an undeniable feeling of  _ life _ in the smells, sounds, and sights he can see, just from here. Promising.

He has slouched his way here from the south, and Hades takes a step to the east before he pauses, some faint tugging sensation in the back of his mind pleading with him to stop, to look back. The artist turns, golden eyes narrowed as he surveys the street that leads to the west, searching for anything that may have caused his momentary delay. It is not often that Hades’ instincts kick in, to point something out that his otherwise-distracted mind has missed, but he has so rarely regretted following those selfsame instincts in the past, he does try to listen to them whenever they make themselves known.

To the west, Hades can see the city’s age in its buildings, in the rusting and sagging chain link fences that surround overgrown tennis courts, in the crumbled remains of what once must have been beautiful houses. They stand hollow and empty now, charred and rotting in the open air, moldering signs declaring them foreclosed upon, somber skeletons of someone’s past. He starts back in that direction immediately, only giving the most cursory of glances to the state of traffic in the road before he is jogging across the street, then again to the north, making a beeline towards those gutted old homes. 

They have  _ feelings _ , these structural bones, picked over by the vultures of a society that is ever too focused on advancement and growth and improvement, even stirring the dying embers of his own cold heart with their aching beauty. They make for a compelling scene on their own, before one even factors in the overgrown state of one house’s lawn, and the stark bareness of the one beside it, covered in debris and soot and ash from a fire long-dead. Hades is reaching into his pocket for his tomestone to snap a few furtive photographs of the houses from different angles when he slows, noticing a cluster of small bodies all piled eagerly together in an abandoned parking lot just beside his targets.

He snaps just a few photos of the houses on his tomestone, distant, bad angles, but does not want to draw undue attention to himself as he approaches the dilapidated structures from the group in the parking lot nearby. Hades is startled to find that not as many of the people in the throng as he had originally guessed are children; it is an even mixture. There are those young enough to still be learning how to ride a bike, much less drive a car, but so too are there elders in varying states of dress; some of them like they have come from an opera house uptown, and others like they have rolled out of a gutter. Every single one of them is staring, transfixed, at a large gap in the center of the lot of them, which has been left carefully, reverentially open.

Ever a sacrilegious bastard, Hades carefully wades into the crowd, which surprisingly parts with little issue for him; he stands nearly a head taller than the tallest person there, and does not have to push all the way into the crowd to see just what has everyone here so utterly entranced. He stops dead at the sight, his heart stuttering in his chest, as he observes what can only be called a masterpiece. He recognizes it for what it is only because of his own countless hours studying perspectives, and understands now the blatant wonder on the smallest of children’s faces, who have all gathered near the center of the crowd to stare down at the edges of the art with concerned awe.

It looks like a hole in the very crust of the world, overlooking fields of vibrant colors and outlandish trees, splotches of bright color belying small houses nestled in the forest and a skittering path winding its way between them. It could be a photograph, he thinks, if not for the remnants of the chalk which has been blown carefully to the edges of the image, around where the artist has made it appear as though the asphalt is still crumbling, falling down into the picturesque scene below. He can just barely hear the deliberate scrape of chalk upon asphalt, and then someone is standing up, just in front of him, and dropping a piece of chalk onto the ground like it is a microphone and they have just said something they believe to be terribly clever.

The throng of people reacts as one, all clamoring towards the center, but carefully, so as not to smudge any part of the artwork before them, brandishing tomestones like madmen. The person who has stood up is wiping their hands off on their filthy black sweatshirt, smearing multi-colored chalk stains along the length of it, as they step carefully back out of the crowd, and reach up to lower their hood. Their hair is a rats’ nest if Hades has ever seen one, but as they reach up to tug down the white bandana - equally chalk-stained - they have been using to cover their nose and mouth, he is struck by the glow of their cheeks, the way their eyes dance with accomplishment as they sweep out over the crowd of excited onlookers, their radiant smile. 

Something seems to slide into place inside his chest, and Hades lets out a surprised little cough, reaching up to lay a hand over his heart, the crowd and the chalk on the asphalt all but forgotten as he follows the chalk artist with his eyes. They move over to a bag leaning against a rusty stretch of fence and squat down to retrieve a dented metal water bottle from the side compartment of the bag, and take deep swigs from it as they reach up to swipe their forearm along their temple, which only serves to smear the chalk dust from their forehead into their hair and along their sweatshirt sleeve.

Thunder rumbles overhead, and children squeal in alarm, adults beginning to squawk at the threat of impending rain. Some of the crowd around him begins to scatter, pocketing their tomestones and bolting for shelter before the rain can reach them. Others sigh and seem to reluctantly pry themselves away from the chalk art on the asphalt, reaching into bags for umbrellas or jackets as the smell of petrichor seems to roll over the parking lot, promising a sudden, powerful deluge to come. The rest of them, some scattered few crouched over the edges of the artwork, cast alarmed gazes up to the sky and hasten to remove their jackets and shirts, apparently about to attempt to protect the chalk from the very rain with their belongings, if they can.

“No, let it get wet,” a rough, even voice calls from behind the crowd, and Hades turns his attention back to the fence, the chalk-stained artist in black. They move over to the remnants of the crowd as the majority of it disperses, still smiling like they haven’t a care in the world. “You all saw it, and I even got to finish it. It made you feel something. Now… let it go. Beauty is ephemeral,” they say, pausing at the foot of their artwork, and casting an affectionate look down at it, before turning their gaze to the dismayed people around the chalk. “You have your pictures, but more importantly, you have the feelings this piece gave you. Time may dull them, but nothing can take your feelings from you,” they say, stuffing their hands into their pockets and turning their gaze up to the sky again, seeming to contemplate the angry grey clouds roiling slowly overhead.

The last few people in the crowd reluctantly seem to agree, and remove their jackets from the edges of the mural, donning them and crying out in delight or dismay as the first drops of rain spatter against their heads and the asphalt around them. Hades whips out his own tomestone and snaps a few photos of the chalk mural, blown away by this artist’s talent with the temperamental medium, before the rain can wash their work away. When he looks back up, tomestone tucked safely back in his pocket, and drops of rain flattening his unkempt white hair against his skull, Hades sees the artist with their face still pointed up at the sky, a serene smile gracing their lips, making them appear radiant even in the inclement weather, the dreadful light from an overcast sky.

They open their eyes and turn to him, fixing him with an amused little smile before shrugging their shoulders, stretching their arms up over their head with a series of frankly alarming popping sounds, then turn on their heel and walk back over to their bag, scooping it up off the ground and slinging it back over their shoulder. He watches them disappear back down the street, indiscernible from anyone else hurrying to find cover from the rain as more and more drops soak their dark sweatshirt, making the chalk stains less visible. Then Hades turns back to the drowning artwork on the asphalt, and watches as each raindrop scatters the carefully-shaded colors, until the whole thing is little more than an incohesive blur of vibrant puddles swirling together.

He turns his gaze to the artist’s signature, which he had not noticed until he was the only one left standing in the parking lot. Perhaps, he thinks, he will be able to find more of their work with this, as he pulls his tomestone out and quickly snaps a picture of the neat tagline. Simple, clean. He has no idea what it means, but suspects he will find out soon enough. Hades turns and muses on the possible meanings of the artist’s tag as he turns to go explore the street to the west, content in the knowledge that although their masterpiece is actively drowning, the artist, at least, seems pleased with their work.

WoL. What a curious signature.


	2. 2

Hades snorts and leans back in his upholstered leather office chair as he watches the events of the interview play out on the screen before him. “What do you identify as?” the reporter in the recording asks, brandishing their absurdly oversized microphone in the artist’s face, staring intently at WoL as they await their answer. 

“I’m an artist,” WoL says, leaning away from the microphone as the reporter sighs, pressing cheaply-manicured nails to their temple and shaking their head. WoL looks back down at the piece they were working on at the time the video was taken, a striking image of a field of flowers in every variety one could imagine - and several that no one had ever imagined before.

“Do you use he or she pronouns?” the reporter tries again, this time not brandishing the microphone quite so aggressively, but growing visibly anxious as they glance back at the person holding up the camera, who from the motion of the video, seems to shrug.

“Neither,” WoL shrugs, reaching down for a different color of chalk from the bag that rests between their shoes on the asphalt.

The reporter turns to the person holding the camera with an exasperated expression, then turns back to the chalk artist, squaring their shoulders.  _ Oh _ , Hades thinks, his lips curling into a smirk. They’re going to be  _ rude _ now. “What’s between your legs?” The reporter asks, smiling smugly down at WoL as they thrust their microphone towards the artist again.

WoL straightens up and gives the reporter a perplexed look, then glances down at their legs for a moment. The camera follows the artist’s eyes down to their chalk-stained pants, then angles back up as WoL stares directly into the camera, their expression blank. “Chalk.”

He doesn’t get to see what happens next, as the video cuts to some popular clip of a person and their friends laughing raucously, but Hades is grinning anyway as he closes out of the browser window, steepling his hands together above his keyboard. He quite  _ likes _ this WoL character. He never  _ likes _ anyone anymore, or so it seems, so this is a novel experience for him.

Hades sits perfectly still for a few moments, watching as the desktop background on his monitor cycles between several of his favorite, but less popular paintings, considering his options. He’s looked into WoL’s artwork, read all their interviews, even tracked down their personal blog, which is alarmingly full of images of cats and grisly scenes from horror films, often one after the other, as if the two disparate themes have anything to do with each other. The only piece of even tangentially relevant information he has found thus far -  _ very _ deep in that personal blog - is that WoL apparently stands for ‘Warrior of Light.’ 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very Short, I know, let me live, I decided WoL is enby and I couldn't NOT do this.


	3. 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> T rating now for Emet using wine to deal with people, just to be safe. We'll build up to higher ratings as we go. Promise. They're just both being a little slow right now.

The Warrior of Light proves difficult to track down. But Hades - or rather, Emet-Selch - has a gallery opening next week that his agents, Mitron and Loghrif, refuse to call off. He has a few paintings already that he’s been holding onto for just such an event, one during an extended dry spell, where he hasn’t painted in months. 

One is a simple painting of a city block, viewed from above, with people and cars painted quickly in, then smeared for the motion blur effect. It feels unoriginal and unexciting, but simply because his signature is in the bottom corner, Hades knows it will sell for millions. The other is abstract, and if he were being honest, he might admit had been the result of several spilled glasses of wine, which he then painted whimsically over after draining the rest of the three spilled bottles. The public doesn’t need to know that, though. It too will sell for millions.

This leaves at least three slots open, which Hades must now rush to fill before the weekend. He paints a quick mash-up of the cats and horror he had found on the Warrior of Light’s personal blog, intending to spin it as some sort of commentary on society’s superstitions regarding black cats; he might even get some of them adopted, which Mitron and Loghrif would love to use as a publicity booster. As if he  _ needs _ any more publicity. 

With that painting done in a day, Hades moves on to his final two blank canvases. The obvious solution is in the pictures he had saved to his tomestone the other day, the two skeletons of houses long-since abandoned. But as he sets brush to canvas, a dreary gray pigment at its tip (that he had agonized over how to recreate for no less than a half an hour), Hades pauses. He glances down at the irritatingly bright screen of his tomestone and pauses, his thumb on the glass. Then he swipes a few times, and stops on a picture of the throng wrapped around the Warrior of Light at work. This particular shade of gray  _ does _ look like one of the coats the children was wearing…

Hades lowers his wrist, and makes a few preliminary strokes with his brush, capturing the wrinkled outline of a child’s coat sleeve. He can paint the houses after he finishes this one.

* * *

Emet-Selch enjoys gallery openings for three reasons. 

Reason the first: He does not have to wear his absurd, nearly floor-length coat with the fur about the collar when he is in the gallery. For whatever reason, the public only expects him to wear the coat everywhere  _ else _ . No, for gallery openings, he is allowed to wear what he pleases, and nothing pleases Hades more than presenting a sharp image in a three-piece, custom-tailored suit ensemble. This one is blue, a deep midnight blue, complete with lab-created crystal fragments, to echo the night sky. He has done his eyes up in a similar shade of blue, to make his golden irises stand out better, and swapped out his usual lip tint for something that glitters in a pale pink. A similar glitter dusts his cheekbones and the very corners of his eyes, tying the whole look together quite nicely, he thinks. Since he’s outdone himself so thoroughly with the suit and makeup, before even taking into account the way he has slicked back his brown wig with the white streak, Hades goes with casual shoes for the evening. Plain black ankle boots, of supple leather, crafted specifically to his measurements, and  _ only _ a three inch heel. After all, the people are coming to look at his art tonight, not him.

Reason the second: Wine. The only way Hades has ever been able to suffer being trapped in a room with a veritable horde of people who all want something from him has been to be at the very least, thoroughly buzzed. He hasn’t had to ask the gallery owners to furnish him with a whole bottle all for himself half an hour before the gallery is set to begin in years, to his private delight. The woman who runs the gallery with her partner is  _ very _ good at picking out vintage wines that somehow match up perfectly with the theme of his paintings each opening. It’s a lovely way to open the evening, even though it forces Hades to retreat to the gallery bathroom a few minutes before opening to brush his teeth so as not to come across as a lush. Mitron and Loghrif’s rules. But once the gallery has opened to the public, he is  _ allowed _ all the wine he can drink again - as if they could stop him - so long as he only has one glass in his hands at a time; and  _ never _ a  _ bottle _ . All in all, the arrangement could be worse.

Reason the third: One of Hades’ favorite pastimes is to talk circles around people, and at a gallery for his own artwork, there are so  _ very _ many circles to be made. Half the time, all it takes is a single glance, and some tittering art critic or another will be beside themselves with elation or anxiety, believing a flick of his eyes to be enough to confirm or debunk one of their vastly overwrought theories about the meaning behind his painting. Hells, the chaos he can wreak with a word or two to the right people during a gallery opening? It’s some of the best fun he’s had since his Amaurot University days. Hades is usually able to start no less than three physical conflicts just by dropping a snide remark here or there as he makes his rounds about the gallery before Loghrif and Mitron are able to subtly corner him and threaten him into stopping. Mostly, he only stops so that he can watch them glower at him from across the room while he makes idle small talk for the remainder of the evening, leading them on a merry chase to clean up his supposed  shit-stirring .

Tonight will be a good night for shit-stirring, Hades thinks, smirking over the rim of his tenth - perhaps eleventh - glass of wine, at the tittering groups of people loitering about the gallery’s open floor plan. He knows many of them by last name by now, if not first name, because gods know he could not care less about that. But a certain level of decorum is expected of him, as the artist, although Hades rather finds that insulting given that it is his customers who are clamoring for a piece of his art, not him clamoring to sell it. Half of the attendees he recognizes are fools for a good simile, and will happily devolve into debating the rhetoric of his most casual sentences at the drop of a pin, while the other half are the silent, analytical types, who never seem to take their eyes off his art, as though attempting to recreate the paintings in their mind - or perhaps auction them off somewhere else in their head, estimating how much they can gouge their customers for them.

Hades is not surprised by the varying levels of interest in each of his five paintings this evening. The blurred motion piece has a sizeable crowd, but it is the lookers, not the talkers who have lingered the longest in front of it. The abstract has the opposite problem; many of the talkers, and none of the lookers. Similarly popular, as anticipated. It is his last three paintings, the rushed ones, that Hades is most interested in seeing the response to. He did end up painting the skeletal houses, and it has attracted even more attention than the blurred motion and abstract paintings combined. Some of the viewers who are normally only lookers have been moved to discuss the painting with the talkers nearby, and on the whole, Hades is glad he placed that painting nearest the door, so he can avoid the buzz of conversation more easily.

The painting with the black cat and the horror motifs from the Warrior of Light’s blog appears to be the least popular this evening, and there is only one young couple standing in front of it. They make a disparate sight indeed; the dark-haired girl in a pair of heels that look like murder both to wear and to wield, with a baggy black sweater hanging halfway off her fragile form. Her companion on the other hand has cheerful orange hair, accented by a neat pink ribbon, and is wearing a plain white dress with keyhole decorations near the collarbone. Hades blinks at the girls, wondering where their parents might be in the throng of rich assholes clamoring for a chance to buy one of his pieces, then simply shrugs. They aren’t being nuisances, at the very least.

It’s when Hades turns his attention to the back of the gallery, where he has placed the painting of the crowd in the parking lot around the Warrior of Light and their chalk art, that he frowns. He has been keeping an eye on that painting in particular all evening, feeling somewhat more of a connection to it than any of the others, and noticed that no one seems to stay by it. Everyone in the gallery has stopped by it to study it, true, but no one has stayed there… save for one lone figure in what he can only call a tastefully ill-fitting blouse and trouser ensemble. He is used to the standard fashion icon attending his debut galleries, but this individual is new to him; their style not one he has seen rising in popularity, not even on his walks through the many disparate cultures of the city. Hades approaches them, studying their outfit in case he must - gods forbid - actually  _ talk _ to them.

They are wearing a billowing white blouse with ruffled sleeves, tucked in neatly at about mid-waist to a pair of overlarge, wine red bell-bottomed pants that brush the floor, completely concealing their shoes. The pants are in turn cinched tightly about their person by a chunky black leather belt above their hips, complete with an utterly horrendous belt buckle in the front, about the size of Hades’ hand, designed to look like a starfish. How this individual has managed to combine mens’ regency wear with pants that by all rights should have been burned after the 1980s is beyond Hades, but the painter must admit, they have the confidence to pull off the look. Or at least, he presumes they do, beneath the massive white sunglasses they wear, concealing more than half their face before tucking back behind their ears, and beneath the brim of their frankly  _ appallingly _ large black sun hat. What they are doing wearing a sunhat and glasses inside escapes him, but Hades simply assumes they are either incredibly hungover, hiding their identity, or both. Far be it from him to judge.

“Enjoying yourself, my dear?” Hades asks, sidling up beside the individual with the peculiar taste in fashion (that he still cannot decide between iconic or tragic as a descriptive modifier), not so close as to verge into their personal space, but also not so far as to have to shout just to speak to them. He swaps his wine glass to his other hand, turning his eyes up to the painting, recalling how easily the lines and colors came to him once he got started.

There’s a long, awkward moment of silence between them, and Hades glances over, arching an eyebrow at the strangely-dressed figure, wondering if perhaps they aren’t asleep under there. As he turns to face them, they turn to face him, apparently startled to find him standing beside them. It’s a lucky thing they aren’t holding a wine glass, they way they jump when they see him, and Hades instinctively takes a step back himself, not wanting them to knock his own glass in their apparent panic.

“Goodness, have I startled you?” Hades drawls, a smirk tugging at the corner of his lips, hoping to draw the stranger into conversation, perhaps put them at ease, by stating the patently obvious. “So enraptured by the painting you didn’t even notice me arrive?”

“Yes and yes actually,” they admit, their lips (wine red, matching their bell bottoms) curling into a small smile. There’s something oddly familiar to their voice, rough and smooth all at once, and with the faintest trace of an accent Hades cannot for the life of him place. Perhaps this is some newer fashion icon after all, and he’s simply forgotten about them since his last gallery… “It… has something different. Something the other paintings don’t.”

“Oh?” Hades asks, feigning disinterest, despite the way his heart leaps in his chest to hear them say it. “And what, pray tell, might that ‘something different’ be? In your estimation, of course. Best guess, no wrong answers here,” he adds, injecting a teasing note into his voice that he does not at all feel. He is  _ very _ curious to know what the stranger thinks of this painting in particular, because of the simple fact that  _ he _ feels things about this painting in particular.

They turn away from him, reaching up to lower their sunglasses so they can stare up at the painting, assessing it. “I think…” they begin, folding the sunglasses and tapping their lower lip with them, leaving little wine red stains near the edges. “This one has a… life to it that the others don’t have. The blurred one has some… distance between us and the life in it. But this one? It feels like we’re about to just… walk right up to them all, and find out what they’re doing.”

Hades feels his heart stutter in his chest. How could they know that… that was precisely what had happened? Perhaps he ought simply to attribute it to his own skill as a painter. “An interesting theory,” he hums, with an ease he does not feel. “What brought you to that conclusion?”

They shrug up at the painting, then turn to Hades with an expectant smile. “What do you think of it?”

Well. He had not expected to be asked  _ that _ question. Do they truly not know he is the artist? “Well…” Hades chuckles, taking a sip of his wine while he composes himself, deciding to be amused rather than offended that this peculiar character does not know who he is. “I think that we, as the viewers, are meant to be drawn in by the crowd. The only bright color in a sea of grays and browns,” he says, waving a hand at the cluster of bodies that is the main feature of the painting. “It… sparks our curiosity. We want to know what they’re all doing.”

They look at Hades for a moment longer, before nodding, and turning their attention back to the painting, eyes glittering as they take it in. “I like that interpretation,” they hum, reaching up to tap a finger against their chin as they seem to consider something. “Although, it makes me feel a little bad for the artist. Standing on the outside of them all like that. Don’t you think?” They ask, turning those fascinating eyes back up at him - what  _ color _ are those eyes even, really? Why does he suddenly feel so very _warm_?

“Well, I… couldn’t say,” Hades chuckles, keeping the nervous edge out of his voice through willpower and years of practice. “Perhaps you should ask the artist.”

“Perhaps I already did,” they counter, their eyes gleaming from beneath that enormous sunhat, and they flash him a smile before opening their sunglasses and sliding them back onto their face.

Hades blinks, taken completely aback by their words. So they  _ do _ know who he is. Well in that case… He reaches over to a passing waiter with a tray of hors d'oeuvres, and snatches up a napkin, before digging in his back pocket for a pen. They watch him, amused, as he scribbles his tomestone number - his  _ personal _ tomestone number, not his business one - on the napkin and signs it  _ E-S _ , then holds it out to them. “Here. I find your interpretation of this painting very compelling. I think I should like to discuss other artwork with you sometime, if you are amenable. Or you may simply contact me if you need any assistance with anything,” he shrugs, slipping his hands into his pockets once they take the napkin, and peer down at it with polite interest. “Reaching the tall shelves, screwing in lightbulbs, the like. Or throw it out. Entirely up to you.”

They make eye contact with Hades - or he presumes they do, damnable hat and glasses - and nod as they pocket the napkin, then hold a hand out expectantly. Hades blinks down at their hand, which is  _ not _ at an angle he would expect of a request for a handshake, and only looks back up when he hears them chuckle. “Your pen, if I may?” they ask, wiggling their fingers.

“Oh,” Hades breathes, chuckling nervously in response as he places his pen - _expensive, fountain pen!_ His mind screams - into their palm, then finds his hand unceremoniously tugged into theirs, and held in place as they tug up the sleeve of his suit and shirt, baring his wrist. He nearly pulls back in alarm, until he watches them uncap the pen and place it against his skin, which makes him shiver.

“Cold?” They ask, flashing a smile up at Hades before they scribble out their own number, and beneath it, what he presumes is a name, but it is a little difficult to read it upside-down, flustered as he is. “There. Now you have my number, too. Same deal; if you want to chat sometime, or you need help reaching any low shelves, dusting under any sofas,” they tease him, smirking up at him as they return his pen to his palm, and fold their arms across their chest. “And with that, I take my leave,” they say, bowing with a flourish, before brushing past Hades, near enough that he can smell their perfume or cologne, and making a beeline straight for the exit of the gallery.

Hades stands there for a good moment, staring down at the fountain pen in his hand, then the messy script on his wrist. He cranes his neck in order to read the ink, written at a truly inconsiderate angle, studiously stepping to the side of the painting so he does not look like as much of a madman to the rest of the gallery’s visitors.

_ wxx-xxx-xxxx _

_ Wolcott (they/them) _

**Author's Note:**

> ...blame the book club. Or just come screech at me there! Emet-Selch's Wholesomely Debauched and Enabling Book Club: https://discord.gg/ME4eAEt


End file.
